Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/404

386 accurately into newspaper print; and the archives indicate from time to time the presence of trapper bands at the coast settlements or in the interior valleys. With all this, the record is neither complete nor satisfactory in all respects, and there is little likelihood that it can ever be much improved.

In the autumn of 1830, William Wolfskill fitted out a company in New Mexico to trap in the great valleys of California. He was a Kentuckian by birth, thirty-two years of age, with some eight years' experience of trapping and trading in the broad territories surrounding Santa Fé from the north to the south-west. He had been a partner of Ewing Young, then absent in California, and he was assisted pecuniarily in this enterprise by Hook, a Santa Fé trader. There is extant neither list of the company nor diary of the trip; but the expedition took a route considerably north of that usually followed, left Taos in September, crossed the Colorado into the great basin, and pressed on north-westwardly across the Grande, Green, and Sevier rivers, then southward to the Rio Vírgen, trapping as they went. It seems to have been the intention to cross the mountains between latitudes 36° and 37°; but cold weather, with symptoms of disorganization in the company, compelled the leader to turn southward to Mojave. Thence he crossed the desert westward, and arrived at Los Angeles early in February 1831. Here the party was broken up, some of its members returning to New Mexico a few months after their arrival, and others remaining in California. Of the latter those subsequently best known as residents were, besides Wolfskill, George C. Yount and Lewis Burton. Of the individuals of this and other companies I shall have more to say later.